Halima, a Sudanese henna painter goes to Basma's, a young Egyptian bride to prepare her for her wedding: under the eyes of her daughter Ward, the encounter between the two women grows from complicity to suddenly unveiled tensions. Facebook

As I was looking for a subject to do my first short film, I was interested in writing a film with a human and social dimension, talking about real people within their real environment; reflecting and capturing the moments in their "time and place" to observe what Egyptian society is experiencing now, where congestion and polarization has increased, violence, anger, and everyone is in conflict with one another for the slightest reason and something very simple may turn into a battle where the two parties deal with it as a matter of survival.

I chose the main character to be a non-Egyptian one; as Egypt is not at all a small country and lots of other nationalities and refugees live in Egypt; from there I looked for a place and an event where we can put this character with the Egyptian main characters to achieve one goal within a very social framework surrounded by Egyptian rituals and social customs stemming from a poor Egyptian family of flesh and blood living in a simple house in a very local area near the Pyramids of Giza while preparing a bride for her wedding and having a Henna party. Within this simple house now we have two ancient and completely different cultures; one of them is original Sudanese culture and the other a popular Egyptian culture.

I have always been impressed by the dramatic escalation that explodes through a simple daily event and is like a big stone thrown into still water; following that hidden social and human conflict between the characters surfaces as it was escalating through the events of the film such as snowball getting bigger till it turn into a disaster. This is exactly what I was looking for in this film; how could this house that was full of trills of happiness and music and dancing turns into screaming and fighting and crying! Especially when the main incident that lead to this is “unseen” and by this I mean when “Basma”-The bride- falls in the bathroom and breaks her leg, and that opens up a wider space for questions about a conflict between an all in all defeated people; a cruel conflict on a human level where you can sympathize with both parties at once, and then finally leave you wondering!

Henna painting is a well known profession in Egypt; especially in marriages and pre marriage ceremonies. Most of the professionals in this profession are the “Sudanese women” who fled their country escaping the hard economic circumstances; they come here to paint joy on the hands of the Egyptian girls through Henna in return for money; therefore I wanted the narration in the film to be between the documentary and narrative; for that I used a 35mm lens which is the normal lens to shoot the whole film and reinforce its realistic narration also the main character has to be a real character not an actress; a true henna painter like “Halima” and “Ward” her daughter.